There are medical imaging apparatuses enabling imaging of a slice of desired position and orientation in a three-dimensional space for use of the obtained image in diagnosis. In particular, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) apparatuses are medical diagnostic imaging apparatuses utilizing the nuclear magnetic resonance phenomenon of, mainly, proton, which apparatuses apply a radio frequency magnetic field to a subject placed in a static magnetic field to excite nuclear magnetization, and construct images from measured magnetic resonance signals. The MRI apparatuses enable noninvasive imaging of an arbitrary slice without any restriction concerning imaging region.
In the MRI apparatuses, in general, a slice gradient magnetic field for determining a slice to be imaged (slice position scan plane) and an excitation pulse for exciting magnetization in the scan plane are applied at the same time to obtain nuclear magnetic resonance signals generated by the excited magnetization. In order to add positional information to the magnetization, during the period from the excitation to the acquirement of the echo signals, a phase encoding gradient magnetic field and a read-out gradient magnetic field are applied to the magnetization in the scan plane.
In the medical diagnostic imaging apparatuses enable to image an arbitrary slice, such as MRI apparatuses, a slice position should be set beforehand. For this reason, in an examination, scout scan for setting a slice position is performed before the main scan for obtaining an image for diagnosis.
Since the slice position is generally determined according to an examination region or target disease, the slice position is manually set by an operator through a user interface using a scout image. The examination may be performed as a combination of imaging of different slice positions, or periodically repeated imaging of the same slice position. When imaging different slice positions, an operator is required to set the slice position for every imaging. Further, when imaging the same slice position repeatedly, it is difficult for the operator to set the same slice position for every imaging by a manual operation. In any case, the same operation for setting the slice position must be repeated for every imaging, and it is mentioned as one of monotonous troublesome operations.
In order to improve the operability of such operation for determining a slice position, there are proposed, for example, a positioning operation made easier by visual effect (refer to, for example, Patent document 1), an automatic positioning based on image recognition (refer to, for example, Non-patent documents 1 and 2), and so forth. As the effect of the automatization, not only the improvement in the operability, but also improvement in reproducibility of the slice position at the time of the follow-up examination is expected.